bills from the soda fountains landed on his desk.
As the twentieth century dawned, the Coca-Cola Company was selling 281,000 gallons of its syrup every year and had established itself as the leading soda of the South. Moxie remained ahead, but the gap was narrowing fast. But as Hires, Moxie, and Coca-Cola began to eclipse the generic flavors of the fountains and pushed soda success to ever greater heights, these brands found themselves butting up against another fast-growing force in American society: the temperance movement.
Hires was the first to feel the movementâs wrath. In 1895 the WCTU realized that root beer was brewed with yeast and therefore contained alcohol. Fearing that many of its members were at risk of being conned into drinking an alcoholic beverage branded as a temperance drink, it called fora national boycott of root beer and started printing literature to warn teetotal citizens about this sinister brew. Other temperance groups rallied to the call and teetotalers began turning their back on root beer, even though newspapers joked that more people would want to drink it now that they knew it had alcohol in it. The temperance movementâs root beer backlash hit Hires hard, and sales began to plunge. Hires spent the next three years battling the temperance movement that he personally supported to prove that their boycott was misjudged. He eventually emerged victorious after publishing a chemical analysis that showed that the level of alcohol in a Hires Root Beer was less than that in a loaf of bread. Embarrassed, the WCTU quietly dropped its boycott in 1898.
Coca-Cola faced a tougher challenge. By 1900 cocaine was no longer seen as a wonder drug and was increasingly being talked of as a dangerous and addictive narcotic. Candler may have slashed the cocaine back to the merest of traces, but the image of Coca-Cola as the cocaine soda had stuck in peopleâs minds. Soda fountain customers continued to order it by nicknames that gave knowing nods to its Peruvian connectionânames like dope, coke, âa doseâ or âa shot in the arm.â Matters only worsened in July 1898, when Congress imposed a tax on medicines to raise money for the Spanish-American War. Since Candler had registered the Coca-Cola Company as a medicine manufacturer, it found itself caught by the new tax. Keen not to pay more tax, Candler sued the federal government on the grounds that Coca-Cola was a beverage not a medicine. When the case reached court in 1901 Candler got his tax back but the hearings also dredged up the issue of cocaine yet again. In their defense the federal government lawyers noted that Coca-Cola contained the medical drug cocaine, a point Candler confirmed. To defuse the situation Coca-Cola called in Dr. George Payne, secretary of the Georgia State Board of Pharmacy, who informed the court that âa man would explodeâ before he could drink enough Coca-Cola to get a cocaine high.
A year after this uncomfortable court examination of Coca-Colaâs cocaine traces, a further blow came when the news broke in July 1902 that a railroad cashier in Virginia had tried to commit suicide by cutting his throat with a penknife and was now in jail charged with lunacy. A friend of theman told the
Times
of Richmond, Virginia, that the manâs âbreakdown was not so much due to the use of liquor as to the Coca-Cola habit, which had a hold upon him.â
Cocaine was back in the news in June 1903 when the
New-York Tribune
interviewed Colonel J. W. Watson of Georgia, who issued a stark warning about how the âcocaine sniffingâ habit was growing at an alarming rate in Atlanta, particularly among the cityâs black population. âI am satisfied that many of the horrible crimes committed in the southern states by the colored people can be traced directly to the cocaine habit,â he told the paper. Action was needed to curb this habit before a generation lost their minds, he continued,
As the twentieth century dawned, the Coca-Cola Company was selling 281,000 gallons of its syrup every year and had established itself as the leading soda of the South. Moxie remained ahead, but the gap was narrowing fast. But as Hires, Moxie, and Coca-Cola began to eclipse the generic flavors of the fountains and pushed soda success to ever greater heights, these brands found themselves butting up against another fast-growing force in American society: the temperance movement.
Hires was the first to feel the movementâs wrath. In 1895 the WCTU realized that root beer was brewed with yeast and therefore contained alcohol. Fearing that many of its members were at risk of being conned into drinking an alcoholic beverage branded as a temperance drink, it called fora national boycott of root beer and started printing literature to warn teetotal citizens about this sinister brew. Other temperance groups rallied to the call and teetotalers began turning their back on root beer, even though newspapers joked that more people would want to drink it now that they knew it had alcohol in it. The temperance movementâs root beer backlash hit Hires hard, and sales began to plunge. Hires spent the next three years battling the temperance movement that he personally supported to prove that their boycott was misjudged. He eventually emerged victorious after publishing a chemical analysis that showed that the level of alcohol in a Hires Root Beer was less than that in a loaf of bread. Embarrassed, the WCTU quietly dropped its boycott in 1898.
Coca-Cola faced a tougher challenge. By 1900 cocaine was no longer seen as a wonder drug and was increasingly being talked of as a dangerous and addictive narcotic. Candler may have slashed the cocaine back to the merest of traces, but the image of Coca-Cola as the cocaine soda had stuck in peopleâs minds. Soda fountain customers continued to order it by nicknames that gave knowing nods to its Peruvian connectionânames like dope, coke, âa doseâ or âa shot in the arm.â Matters only worsened in July 1898, when Congress imposed a tax on medicines to raise money for the Spanish-American War. Since Candler had registered the Coca-Cola Company as a medicine manufacturer, it found itself caught by the new tax. Keen not to pay more tax, Candler sued the federal government on the grounds that Coca-Cola was a beverage not a medicine. When the case reached court in 1901 Candler got his tax back but the hearings also dredged up the issue of cocaine yet again. In their defense the federal government lawyers noted that Coca-Cola contained the medical drug cocaine, a point Candler confirmed. To defuse the situation Coca-Cola called in Dr. George Payne, secretary of the Georgia State Board of Pharmacy, who informed the court that âa man would explodeâ before he could drink enough Coca-Cola to get a cocaine high.
A year after this uncomfortable court examination of Coca-Colaâs cocaine traces, a further blow came when the news broke in July 1902 that a railroad cashier in Virginia had tried to commit suicide by cutting his throat with a penknife and was now in jail charged with lunacy. A friend of theman told the
Times
of Richmond, Virginia, that the manâs âbreakdown was not so much due to the use of liquor as to the Coca-Cola habit, which had a hold upon him.â
Cocaine was back in the news in June 1903 when the
New-York Tribune
interviewed Colonel J. W. Watson of Georgia, who issued a stark warning about how the âcocaine sniffingâ habit was growing at an alarming rate in Atlanta, particularly among the cityâs black population. âI am satisfied that many of the horrible crimes committed in the southern states by the colored people can be traced directly to the cocaine habit,â he told the paper. Action was needed to curb this habit before a generation lost their minds, he continued,
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